


Catharsis

by rw_eaden



Series: Canon 'Verse Snapshots [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abusive John Winchester, Abusive Parents, Canon Universe, Child Abuse, Gen, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Past Child Abuse, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Violence against trees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 07:49:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10826958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rw_eaden/pseuds/rw_eaden
Summary: It was a bad hunt.





	Catharsis

“Dean?” Sam’s voice is quiet, warbling a little at the end. Dean knows that tone, knows it probably a little too well.

Dean nods, but doesn’t say anything. He keeps his hands at ten and two, eyes focused on the dark stretch of highway in front of him.

It had been a bad hunt.

In this business, you see all kinds of shit. People gutted, the look of pain and terror still painted on their face, wide eyes filled with tears and shock staring back at you, even in death. Broken bodies, necks at odd angles and way more blood than you’d think a single person had in them. Rotting blood smells horrid, by the way, so does puss and whatever the fuck witches like to use in their brews. He’s seen a lot of shit.

Every once in a while, though, there’s a few things he runs into on a case that’s a little bit worse. Dean can deal with dead and broken people. He can’t deal with kids.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Sam askes.

Dean shakes his head. Ten and two. Eyes ahead. There’s a decent sized town just twenty miles ahead. He’ll make it there and drop Sam off. That’s all he has to do. Just twenty miles.

“Are you sure?”

Dean’s pulls in a steady breath and bites his bottom lip, letting his eyes close for just a second. He clenches his fists around the leather of Baby’s steering wheel. The wheel creaks just a bit, but it helps. She understands. She commiserates.

Dean nods again, slow and deliberate. It’s a lie. He knows it. Sam knows it. People three states over know it. But he’s not going to talk about it right now. He’ll probably never talk about it. There are some things you just don’t say, not because you don’t want to or because you’re ashamed, but just because you can’t. Words don’t come, like they themselves are afraid.

Sam frowns, but he drops it. He gets it. Or, he gets it as well as Dean’s ever going to let him.

Twenty miles.

There’s a shitty little motel off the highway, across the street from a shitty gas station. It’ll do. Dean pays. Sam takes their bags into one of the rooms. Dean tosses him the room keys.

“I’m gonna see if this town has a damn bar,” Dean says.

Sam’s eyes linger on his face, probably trying to figure out if there’s something he can do or say to change Dean’s mind or if it’s even worth it. He pushes the hair away from his face and nods.

Dean’s not looking for a bar. He doesn’t need to drink this away right now. It would only make this worse.

It had been a werewolf. Pretty standard hunt, really. Pump ‘em full of silver and they fall pretty easily. It wasn’t that it was a werewolf that was the issue. No, this time there were kids. This bastard had kids. This bastard was a perfectly respectable, upstanding citizen. He was a mechanic. He volunteered at church. He had a June Clever wife and two kids and his carpet was probably shampooed at least once a month. Real salt of the earth kinda guy.

The kids didn’t want to talk to him when Dean and Sam came asking about their death neighbors. The kids wouldn’t look him in the eye. The kids knew their daddy was a werewolf.

Dean finds a decent enough looking patch of woods. The good thing about these tiny Appalachian towns was that are plenty of trees in plenty of weird places. Comes in handy when you really need to piss or beat the hell out of a tree. He pulls Baby to the side of the road and shuts her off, walks back to pop the trunk. There’s a reason he keeps a bat in the trunk.   

There’s a tree not too far off the road that’s about as wide as Dean is. It’ll do. Dean squares his shoulders, steadies his weight and takes a swing. The barbed wire on the end of the bat gets stuck in the bark and he jerks it back, tearing a good chunk from the tree. He swings again. This time there’s a decent crack as the wood of the bat connects with the wood of the tree.

These kids, Rebecca who was eight and Daniel who was six, knew their daddy was a werewolf. They’d seen him wolf out.

Dean rips the bat back. The wood’s wet where the barbs rip out of it.

This motherfucker made sure they knew.

Three more swings of the bat. The flesh of the tree is sufficiently scarred. Chunks of wood fly out every time the bat collides with the tree.

Rebecca’s daddy didn’t beat her anymore. Those were her words. “Daddy doesn’t hurt us anymore unless we’re bad.”

Sweat rolls down the back of Dean’s neck and under his shirt collar. He shirts his weight again and adjusts his grip on the bat.

Daddy didn’t beat them anymore. He just told them they needed to be good kids or they’d make him mad. And when daddy was mad he turned into a monster. Bullshit. Daddy was always a monster.

Dean had shot that fucker in the face. He’d wanted to do worse. He’d wanted to drag him into the lawn, kick him in the ribs, make him bleed. Dean wanted to pick that fuckers brains out of the grooves in the soles of his boots.

An errant sliver of wood flies up and hits Dean in the face. He swears, retaliating with enough force to twinge an old shoulder injury.

Fuck him. Fuck Rebecca’s dad. Fuck him for making her afraid. Fuck him for exposing her to all that fucked up monster shit in this world. Fuck him for using it as a weapon.  Fuck him for using her fear as a weapon. Fuck him for ruining her childhood. Fuck her for ruining her life. Fuck him for everything.

Dean finally stops when his shoulders start to ache and the tears cloud his vision. He leans back against the mutilated tree trunk, dropping the bat at his feet. Blinking up at the stars, he wills himself to do something. He’s nearly crying, but he’s stuck on the edge of frustration and pain. There’s still enough restraint in him to push it all down again, to wipe the stray tears from his eyes and walk back to the car, pretend it never happened. There’s still time not to break down. But this is cliff Dean wants to fall over. It’s been to fucking long.

The bastard’s name was John Malloy. Fuck John Malloy. Fuck John.

Dean lets out a shuddered exhale and he falls over the edge. He’s sniffling and making that horrible pathetic noise in the back of his throat. His shaking shoulder ache from the exertion and from years of getting thrown against shit.

Fuck John; both Rebecca’s and Dean’s. They deserve to feel this fear. They deserve to know what it’s like to be terrified of their father’s wrath. To never have a goddamn bruise to show for it and to have everyone in the goddamn world pretend like it couldn’t really be that bad. They deserved to live with this shit, not him and not Rebecca.

Dean screams into the night. He sinks into the dirt at the base of the tree.

He catches his breath after god knows how long. He’s covered in dirt and sweat and snot and tears. The tree behind him is worse though, but he doesn’t want to think about that. He could feel bad, after all he’s probably sentenced it to death with all those gashes and missing chunks, but he doesn’t care. No one is going to care.

They never do.

**Author's Note:**

> I was having a bad day so I made Dean beat up a tree.  
> It is what it is.
> 
> If you'd like to talk to me about Dean you can come see me on [tumblr](http://rosemoonweaver.tumblr.com/). I'm nice and I don't bite. 
> 
> Comments and kudos are appreciated.


End file.
